When a band of musicians or an individual musical artist is desirous to making a recording, for example a record or album, it is beneficial to use facilities included in a recording studio. In its most basic form, a recording studio includes a room in which the band or artist is located when making music, a control room for a recording engineer, together with recording gear. The recording gear includes equipment such as microphones, cables, monitor speakers and a multitrack recorder. Optionally, the multitrack recorder is implemented digitally using an AD-converter, a DA-converter and a personal computer executing appropriate multitrack recording software. Alternatively, the multitrack recorder is implemented as a more conventional electromechanical device using magnetic recording tape.
It is contemporarily feasible to implement a professional home recording studio provided that a skilled recording engineer is employed to operate the studio and other associated equipment such as microphones are of sufficiently high quality. In the year 2011, it is estimated that professional-quality recording equipment needed for implementing a small home recording studio is in an order of Euro 5000. If a personal computer is employed for the multitrack recorder, for example a laptop computer, the equipment for implementing the recording studio is potentially highly portable. However, expensive home recording studios are also purchasable, for example a proprietary Pyramix mastering workstation is estimated to cost in an order of 20000 USD (USD=United States dollars).
When employing an aforementioned contemporary studio, an actual recording process involves each musician playing his or her part separately to provide a plurality of “takes”, and then the takes are combined in a mixing process where characteristics of each take is individually adjustable so as to obtain a preferred balance between the takes. For example, in a case of recording a rock band at a home studio, a drummer of the band would be recorded first to provide a drummer take, typically whilst hearing a demo guitar and demo bass via headphones so as to obtain a correct duration of musical bars to the recording. Optionally, the demo guitar and demo bass, via their respective musicians, are played together with the drummer in a manner such that guitar and bass amplifiers are located in a separate room to avoid their sound contribution being included into the drummers take; the sound of the guitar and bass is transduced using microphones and corresponding microphone signals mixed together to generate a corresponding mixed signal which is then employed to drive headphones of the drummer, and of the musicians playing the bass and guitar. However, the guitar and bass signals are not recorded at this point to provide corresponding takes of the bass and the guitar, because their sole purpose is to guide the drummer when playing to provide the drummer take.
Often, after several repetitions and corresponding recordings, a recording engineer and members of the rock band are satisfied with the drummer take, the activities are then focused to generate a bass take, namely bass guitar take. During recording of the bass take, the bass guitar musician is provided with a replay of the drummer take via headphones, optionally together with the demo guitar. This process of progressing recording takes is repeated until takes for all members of the rock band have been recorded by the recording engineer.
After the takes have been completed, a mixing engineer fine-tunes each of the takes individually, normally starting with the drummer take. Optionally, the takes are mixed to generate a composite track by way of a mixing process that is optionally executed in the aforesaid control room; beneficially, the control room is an acoustically treated room including high-quality loudspeakers and a computer. For example, the control room is acoustically treated room, which is substantially devoid of natural reverberation. The mixing engineer is operable to add various sound effects to the takes, for example signal limiting, equalization, dynamic range compression and so forth when generating the composite track until the musicians in the band are satisfied with the composite track. Whilst adjusting a given take, namely “track”, the mixing engineer ensures that respective timbres of the takes are mutually compatible when mixing to generate the composite track. The composite track substantially corresponds to a final mix which is eventually for broadcast, sale via data carriers such as CD's and records, or otherwise disseminated to the public, although certain mastering adjustments to the composite track are often implemented in practice for obtaining a best rendition in the final mix. A total number of takes mixed together to form a corresponding composite track often includes several dozen takes, and preparation of a composite track take often require hours, days, even weeks of work. The composite tracks are included together by a mastering engineer to provide a final album for dissemination to the public.
The mastering engineer has a task of finalizing an overall sound of the album. The mastering engineer is thus operable to execute a mastering process, which is usually implemented much faster than aforesaid mixing activities implemented by the mixing engineer. Typically, the mastering process is executed within a couple of days. For example, the mastering engineer has a task of making the album sound as loud as possible when program material pertains to rock music. Human appreciation of sound, namely a combination of human ear activity and human brain activity, finds louder sounds more interesting than quieter sounds. Since the album producing process executed by the mastering engineer cannot in practice influence a volume setting of a consumers earpiece, the mastering engineer is operable to apply certain audio effects, which cause the sound to be perceived on listening to be louder than it actually is in reality. These effects include dynamic compression as well as an addition of subtle distortion effects.
Since given rock bands and record producers desire that listeners, namely customers, to find their particular albums more interesting in comparison to competing artists and albums, a generally similar loudness enhancing maximization is applied on all contemporary rock records and similar, with a consequent result that most contemporary rock band albums sound mutually equally loud, too mutually similar and fatiguing to listeners.
Contemporary albums involve slow and tedious manual work on the part of the recording engineer, the mixing engineer and the mastering engineer, as well as the musicians, for example during mastering and especially mixing of takes. Such work involves experimenting with different mixes, whereas work involved with overall sounds of rock bands or artists is kept to a minimum. Consequently, artistic freedom becomes limited on account of mixing and mastering engineers not being inclined to take risks and potentially jeopardize several days' work. Moreover, since home recording studios have become more common, the artist, the recording engineer, the mixing engineer, the mastering engineer, as well as the produce for albums produced by the home studio are often implemented by one person.
Clearly, a contemporary need arises for sound processing methods which enable recordings in albums to be enhanced which enables them compete better against other albums.
In a published U.S. Pat. No. 4,984,495 (“Musical Tone Signal Generating Apparatus”, Applicant—Yamaha Corp.; inventor—Fujimori), there is described a musical tone signal generating apparatus. The apparatus is implemented such that first sampling data and second sampling data are multiplied together by a convolution operation, wherein the first sampling data indicates instantaneous amplitude values of a musical tone waveform generated from a keyboard, for example. The second sampling data is obtained from an impulse response waveform signal indicative of a reverberation characteristic of a room or an acoustic characteristic of an amplifier or musical instrument such as a guitar or a piano. Alternatively, the second data can be obtained from a waveform signal indicative of an animal sound, a natural sound or the like. Then, the multiplication result of the first and second sampling data is combined together into the musical tome waveform data, whereby a musical tone signal corresponding to this musical tone waveform data is generated. Thus, the musical tone is modulated with another sound such that the reverberation or acoustic characteristic will be simulated in the musical tone to be generated, whereby the variable musical effect can be applied to the musical tone.